LAT Losing Subscribers? Just Paint the Titanic Green!

P.J. Gladnick
May 7th, 2008 9:57 AM
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The Titanic has hit an iceberg and is sinking. Not to worry, just paint the lifeboats with a new color scheme and things will improve. As ridiculous as that sounds, it is not much different than the proposal of the Tribune Company Chief Innovation Officer, Lee Abrams, who proposed changing the color of Los Angeles Times vans:

Being too close to it. LAT has about 20 vans...but they're all Black? Hmmm. Maybe they should be painted in LAT colors. There ARE more than a few commuters driving around down there.

Apparently Abrams thinks basic black is not exciting enough but he seems to love the color green according to his internal blog post about changes at the Los Angeles Times obtained by LA Observed:

...They use soy based ink and recycled paper. Hmmm...maybe they should be bragging about that on every page as LA is the home of green.

Yeah, that should do the trick for turning around the problems of the Los Angeles Times. Forget about addressing such issues as biased reporting or using incorrect facts as has been chronicled extensively in NewsBusters. Just change the color scheme of the vans and boring their readers by endlessly bragging about being green over and over again. More comedy gold is provided by Abrams in his psychobabble about attracting "cult" and "fringe" readers:

Blowing up Newspapers in the name of change? NO! as with most papers I've talked to, there's a fear of blowing off the existing core in an effort to reach new readers. NO! Firstly, it’s all about accepting what a newspapers "natural" audience is. 50+? Fine. Now, lets own ALL of them. 100% share. Complete and total domination. That's the idea. And...Funny thing, by re-igniting this 'natural' audience, lower demos will follow....but not by TRYING too hard to reach them. I call it cult and fringe. Cult is your natural reader aka core...

Abrams comedy act continues unimpeded by any suggestion of substantial change in the Los Angeles Times. Here are a few more of his comedy highlights:

...my point here is that the LAT like most papers DOES this stuff...but it's a mystery due to 1938 navigation and look. Bring out the 2x4. It's WAR out there.

...The content is there. As with all of our papers, the content is there. It's amazing. In LA they have some star columnists. Now---how do we turn them into print celebrities?

...On Eye stimulation, I think some of our greatest assets are our designers. We gotta LIBERATE them. In LA there's a guy who did some redesigns of the Business page. WOW! It was amazing...

Thanks again for the comedy act, Lee. Please continue to ignore the real problems of the Los Angeles Times so you can keep us roaring with laughter over your cosmetic solutions such as repainting the news vans.